A White Day on the Western Front
by SugarcaneSoldier
Summary: Tanya is able to get a taste of a nice, peaceful life, even on the battlefield.


Tanya let out a sigh and watched as her breath spiraled through the air. She glared at the sight and the reminder it gave her.

Instead of sipping on coffee and enjoying the fruits of a rear echelon position, or standing around a table inside and helping to plan their next move against the Republic, _or_ even huddling around a fire and trying to fight off the cold with the ground troops, she was thousands of meters in the air.

Watching.

She sighed again. It was pointless to imagine what it would be like away from the front, but she didn't have too much to do. Even rubbing her hands together was pointless – they had spells that helped to keep a limited area around them warm enough to operate in. It was… odd, really.

Her idea of trench warfare had been simple: people are ordered across an impassable piece of land in an attempt to advance a few hundred feet, where a static status quo was reached once more. Most of the time, soldiers wouldn't be able to do much, thousands died, and that repeated until one side ran out of bodies.

Her first days in the OCS, learning the actualities of this kind of warfare in school, as well as her first few days fighting on this front had been… _enlightening _as to the true nature of trench warfare.

The lines changed much more often than she had assumed, and that was without taking into account this world's technology.

She was fairly sure that tanks hadn't been invented from the beginning of her world's equivalent of this war. Their addition to the battlefield made it that even _more _people died, and that the lines were chaotic and even more fluid, whenever they were utilized.

Her research indicated that they had been invented the same year that she had been born. It was possible it was a coincidence, but she wouldn't bet anything on it.

She sighed again. Of course, her current position told her another reason why this war was so much more dynamic than she had thought it would be.

Flying high in the air, in an age when the jet engine wasn't even a glimmer in some engineer's eye, Tanya was well aware that the Empire's mages contributed greatly to this vast waste of resources.

They could spot weaknesses in the opponent's lines and help them move forward, sure, but advancing a few miles, when there were dozens of trenches behind any that they captured, was an exercise in futility, if not full blown insanity.

She sighed again. Well, it was mostly safe up here. She had more mana than anyone else on record in the Empire and more imagination about how best to use it. That meant her position up here, while more open, was safer than if she were just an infantryman on the ground.

_"Achoo!"_

She sniffled and looked around her. It was beginning to snow and get even colder. Grumbling, she increased the power into her Temperature Regulation spells and continued to think.

The only downside was, of course, the cold. It was cold on the ground, but it was _many _times worse up in the air, in the middle of a December night.

She couldn't ignore her job, however, and the night watch was a part of her duties as a soldier, no matter-

"Second Lieutenant! There's something happening on the ground!"

Tanya's eyes snapped up, and she began to mentally curse herself. Regardless of the fact that she hadn't yet seen a single mage today or the lack of noise and even movement along the enemy's lines, she couldn't ignore her surroundings. That would set a bad example and, more importantly, she might get one of her subordinates killed if she wasn't watching.

Like the woman that had just grabbed her attention. "Yes, Corporal Serebryakov?"

She pointed at the ground. "The infantry appear to be… crossing into no man's land. But…"

Tanya frowned. There wasn't any artillery fire they could hear, and things on the ground didn't sound nearly chaotic enough for a charge.

She swiped her own binoculars into a hand and peered down, trying to identify what the Corporal had pointed out.

It didn't take long for her to find them, and it took even less time for her to scowl at the sight below her. Was he…?

Tanya nodded to herself as she watched the Imperial soldier walk towards the opposite lines. She was fairly sure she knew what was happening, but it would be a good idea to check, just in case.

She turned to the Corporal and motioned to the other two men under her command to come closer. "Activate a Hyperacusis spell."

They took a moment to remember that spell, but they all did activate it in the end. Tanya didn't blame them for the delay, as increasing your sensitivity to sounds on a battlefield was a very good way of going deaf. The useful spell was, however, a standard, if unused, spell that all mages learned.

Slowly, the sound from the soldiers below reached them. The other three seemed confused.

"Is that… singing?" asked Corporal Serebryakov. Tanya didn't give the question an answer – it was either rhetorical or asinine, since they could all clearly hear some song that would sound better on a stage in Berun than on a battlefield.

She smiled broadly. _This_ was her favorite part of trench warfare. It didn't happen often – the François and the Imperials hadn't gotten along for the fifty years the Empire had been around, and the much less angry Albionese volunteers were few in number – but truces between commanders on the ground and their opposing troops did occur.

The people participating in this vast waste would see reason and realize the futility of this mess and stop fighting, adopting a 'live and let live' approach to their enemies. Soldiers would cross to recover bodies, get some uninterrupted sleep, and even exchange provisions and souvenirs.

The General Staff despised it of course, and Tanya, in all of her reports, expressed disappointment for the lack of resolve in the troops. Internally, however, she _loved _it.

She was able to fight less if opposing Aerial Mages noticed the lack of fighting below and chose to follow the lead of those on the ground, for one thing. It also showed that, if they weren't burdened by harsh laws or orders, people would seek a more peaceful solution than the people at the top.

She lowered her binoculars. Mages didn't often observe these truces, though they respected those on the ground all the same. There wasn't much to recover or trade up here, and things were naturally more competitive and deadly up so high.

She scowled for a moment. She _was_ confused as to how it had gone so far as to lead to singing, however. It wasn't like today was-

She glared at the sight below her. Maybe today _was_ special.

"Corporal… what day is it today?"

She asked the question already knowing the answer, but maybe…

"Ah… it's the 24th. Christmas Eve." She seemed to be having an epiphany, and Tanya couldn't blame her. The woman didn't have memories of movies from the future to contextualize what was going on below her.

_I think it was called the Christmas Truce._

She didn't often care about Christmas in her last life, beyond the new hires that would be brought in to handle the flood of seasonal business and her role in firing many of said new hires after the holiday rush was over.

This time around, seeing as she was raised by nuns in an orphanage, Christmas was, for the other children, a time to ask Father Christmas and god for someone to come and adopt them. It wasn't nearly as corporate as it would come to be.

She sighed. Imperial doctrine dictated that she should ask her superiors for permission to bomb the defenseless François, and she didn't really want to take this opportunity to relax, seeing as it was provided by a _religious _holiday. However…

She looked to her subordinates. They were still watching the people below them, marveling at the sight of the opponent's commander coming out to meet the man that had sung and his probable superior.

She sighed. She didn't really _want_ to fight, and it was clear that her troops would feel horrible about having to fight, and she didn't want to give Being X any satisfaction.

She frowned, thinking.

Well, if she fought, she'd be playing his game by fighting his war. If she didn't, then she'd be using the holiday he claimed to be the god of to avoid his main goal of turning her into some kind of lobotomized prayer-dispensing machine.

She smiled, her mind made. "Troops, turn off your radios."

They all spun around to look at her, and she shrugged when none of them asked the obvious question as to why they would do that. "With all the equipment they had to pull out of storage to ensure the safety of this front, it was inevitable that some of it would be found faulty from age."

Again, they all just blinked at her, and she glared at them. She deliberately stared them in the eyes as she turned off her radio. "Let's go mingle with the infantrymen and help out. We won't get breaks like this again."

They needed no further orders. They all copied her action and sped towards the ground. As Tanya drifted down, she smiled softly.

She really wouldn't get another chance like this. Regardless of whichever World War this one took after, death and destruction were assured for millions. She should take this while she had the chance.

The infantrymen seemed shocked to watch them come down, but Tanya just grinned and shouted "Merry Christmas!"

She would spend the rest of the day talking with people on both sides of the front lines, eating, and even singing a song or two, as long as they didn't glorify some deity she didn't think existed. She would even talk with the François using broken 'Albionese,' trying to memorize the scene.

When the war ended, maybe she'd write a book about it. Regardless of the outcome, though, the memory would keep her warm whenever she flew high in the cold, open air.

-OxOxO-

A/N: A short little idea that came to me after I saw a scene from one of the movies about the Christmas Truce. Tanya would undoubtedly adore this kind of thing, and some comments expressing your thoughts on the subject would be greatly appreciated!


End file.
